For me:
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Privacy reasons. When a comment is “deleted” on Lemmy, the comment is actually only hidden to all except instance administrators. The comment remains on the post and continues to display the poster’s username. kbin is also not a beacon of privacy, but it at least removes deleted comments from threads. This is also why I try to interact more on kbin magazines than Lemmy communities.
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kbin has a sweet community search tool that not only searches kbin magazines, but also Lemmy communities and even Mastodon groups. This means you can easily find communities all across the #Fediverse for any of your interests.
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kbin has a much nicer/more modern UI. It’s got some quirks, but it’s easier to read and navigate than Lemmy by default.
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Customization options! Lemmy has themes, which is cool, but kbin has themes and lots of fun toggles to change your experience.
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Last but certainly not least, Lemmy devs have a pretty shit stance on human rights. (See here: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379). There are communities like #Beehaw, which are super friendly and non-problematic instances separate from the Lemmy devs, but it’s worth noting that instances like Lemmy’s flagship instance and Lemmygrad are run by folks with some grossly misguided views.
More info on Lemmy devs being tankies who deny human rights violations: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
This is what did it for me. After 3 days of finally getting the hang of Lemmy and figuring shit out I learned about the devs and their beliefs.
I don’t want to support humans like that and so I was very grateful to swap to kbin and continue to deepen my learnings of the Fediverse.
I find it extraordinarily difficult to identify with boycotting a product for its creator’s beliefs, considering the majority of consumer products are directly produced through unethical practices. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s about as ridiculous as boycotting Mars because they de-sexified their M&M mascott.
It’s just an untenable standard, and from what I can see there’s nothing intrinsic about the way lemmy functions that can be tied to those beliefs/impacts your own ability to distance from them. I think this is just noise.
When I have a choice between a platform developed by tankies and one that’s not… I’m gonna choose the one that’s not.
But doesn’t kbin federate with lemmy? Are you OK with that relationship? Seems a little arbitrary to me. If you have an open-source standard for a distributed network, you’re not going to avoid associating with someone with unsavory views. The point is that you can control who you federate with anyway.
It’s a hill to die on, I guess.
I keep trying to upvote this and keep getting an error. So consider this an upvote and agreement.
what is a tankie?
Bootlickers, of the communist variety. Not very nuanced people. The type of people who deny the atrocities of Soviet era countries, and some are even dumb enough to support North Korea and the current regimes of China and Russia. Some are from troll farms sponsored by those countries.
Surely kbin’s federation with Lemmy means thus simply isn’t the case?
Although, by nature of the federation, anything add and then deleted may already be replicated to other instances.
Some of whom could instead show/retain a copy of it.
Basically assume that everything will be available and associated with you forever. Even more so than usual.
Just made me realize that this causes a problem with GDPR. Will that cause issues in the future for the Fediverse?
Maybe? It would depend on the duties imposed on a third party re the GDPR. If your host instance removes your data and a different instance doesn’t, do they have a duty to do so? Do you have to make the request of each instance with a copy?
Could be. Sounds like it to me.
Personally I haven’t settled in on anything yet. I have accounts on several different KBin instances, a couple Lemmy instances, and Beehaw (which I guess is also a Lemmy instance)
Currently for me it’s between Beehaw and Kbin. I like I can use either account to interact with either so at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter. Kbin looks MUCH nicer on the phone, but I like Beehaw’s moderation, broad-topic communities, etc. Alone, Beehaw would be too restrictive. Combined with Kbin and a couple Lemmy communities, eventually it’s going to just be a matter of using your favorite username@whatever and deciding which front-end you prefer. Beehaw is a little better for people that want to avoid porn and stuff though.
If one platform begins developing much faster than the other, switch! Have a few accounts subscribed to all your favorite communities so they’re all locked and loaded and ready to use.
Regarding 5., I mean, you pointed out your way around that yourself. Create your account elsewhere. Lemmy is FOSS. If the devs do act shitty, one can fork their stuff and everyone can put it on their instances anyway.
While I don’t want to defend them, because I did not investigate it further, I do have to say that I didn’t see anything weird on their profiles. Moreover, I totally get that they don’t really want to moderate their instances more than they absolutely have to. As in “if it’s not illegal, I don’t care.”
It creates a shitton of work and moral dilemmas, plus you have do deal with bad shit every single day.
I agree with you here.
As a “product” I like how Lemmy works and would like to continue using it. That doesn’t mean I support or defend the devs. A “hate the artist, not the art” situation I’m still wrestling with, personally.
I would hope, in the event this whole debacle starts to impact the development and features of Lemmy, that my home instance will move to a fork. If not, I can delete the account and move to kbin.
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Honestly atm I’m using lemmy for mobile and kbin for desktop. I might switch to kbin more permanently if the app gets finished and is a better user interface. I’m mostly on lemmy simply because I’m mostly on mobile.
The personal views of the lemmy devs are bad, but by the nature of FOSS idk if that should matter. I also know nothing about the veiws of the dev of kbin, and I don’t think I wanna know tbh. I’m not sure how I should behave in regards to the problematic political views of the people making things I like. Lemmy could always be forked and worked on by different people but that would probably only really happen if the current devs ruined it or abandoned it.
For me it simply came down to the fact that I prefer the layout, and it’s also nice knowing I can block whole domains (looking at you, furry spammers). It also integrates with Mastodon if that’s your thing (it’s not my thing), and I have high hopes for the ability of Ernest (the founder and only dev, to my knowledge) to usher it in a good and healthy direction. I can see all content from Lemmy and interact with it though, so it really just comes down to personal preference.
Good God. On beehaw I had to block every furry community separately. Talk about annoying.
Oh God. About 6 years ago I was in Pittsburgh for work. I did get to see a Bruins/Penguins playoff game so that was nice, but I was at a Bridge conference (for people who design and build bridges, not the card game). Several hotel employees and taxi drivers warned me that a furry conference was coming the day our bridge conference ended. That was the first time I heard the term “furries”. Then they descended upon the city while I was still there. To this day it’s still the most intense culture shock I’ve ever had.
Ugh, I’m so sorry you had to experience that horrific playoff series.
There is this post by fedi.tips that explicitly warns against using Lemmy because of developer concerns: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110476830253102884
The lemmy devs tried denying it in an update, and then someone brought the receipts. I really do not want to support those devs.
Lemmy is developed by tankies who deny and censor talk about human rights violations.
https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Do you know kbin developers political views?
No
hopes to keep it that way